Saturday, October 31, 2015

It never looks like hysteria when you are in the middle of
it. It never feels like a mania when you are being consumed by righteous zealotry. It never looks or
feels like a cult when you believe it to
the depths of your soul.

True believers are never swayed by the evidence. They
believe the absence of empirical data is a test of their faith. They might skew
the data in order to lure in those who still hold to an outmoded view of empirical
science, but they themselves have given their lives to the narrative, not to
the facts.

If you can still be a true believer when the facts tell
another story, your status within the cult will be enhanced. If you really want
to take it a step further into delirium, you should propose punishing and
persecuting those who do not believe.

Up with climate change! Down with the marketplace of ideas!

Those who worship at the altar of the goddess of nature will
severely punish anyone who denies their beliefs.

Eminent scientists like Richard Lindzen of MIT and Nobel
Prize winner Ivar Giaever have stated forcefully that the climate change
hysteria is based on bad science-- if it is based on science at all.

Now a group of French mathematicians has weighed in on the
side of those who, while accepting that the climate does change, find no real
evidence to suggest that human activity is causing the change. They suspect a
more nefarious purpose: climate change fanatics want to shut down Western
economies. That would get us back to the state of nature, n’est-ce pas?

As the
United Nations gears up for its next international conference on climate change
in Paris next month (COP 21), a
scathing white paper released by a society of French mathematicians calls its
fight against global warming “absurd” and “a costly and pointless crusade”.

“You
would probably have to go quite a long way back in human…history to find [such
a] mad obsession,” according to a translated summary of the document released
in September by the Paris-based Société
de Calcul Mathématique SA.

The
mathematicians harshly criticized a “crusade [that] has invaded every area of
activity and everyone’s thinking," noting that "the battle [against]
CO2 has become a national priority.

"How
have we reached this point in a country that claims to be rational?” they ask,
adding that mathematicians “do not believe in crusades. They look at facts,
figures, comments and arguments.”

“There
is not a single fact, figure…[or] observation that leads us to conclude the
world’s climate is in any way ‘disturbed,” the paper states. “It is variable,
as it has always been. … Modern methods are far from being able to accurately
measure the planet’s overall temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or
100 years ago are even less reliable.”

Noting
that concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) have “always” varied, the French
mathematicians also said that after processing the raw data on hurricanes
themselves, they verified that “they are no more frequent now than they have
been in the past.”

“We are
being told that a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees C[elsius] by
comparison with the beginning of the industrial age would have dramatic
consequences and absolutely has to be prevented.

"When
they hear this, people worry. Has there not already been an increase of 1.9
degrees C?

“Actually,
no. The figures for the period 1995-2015 show an upward trend of about 1 degree
C every hundred years! Of course, these figures, [which] contradict public
policies, are never brought to public attention,” the white paper stated.

Obviously, many things can cause climate change. Human
activity and cow farts are not at the top of the list… if they even
make the list:

The
French mathematicians also said that the UN’s climate models have failed
to take into account natural phenomena that affects climate far more than human
activity.

Human
impact on the climate is “tiny, quite negligible in comparison with natural
causes,” they point out. “Human beings can do nothing about solar
activity, the state of the oceans, the temperature of the Earth’s magna, or the
composition of the atmosphere.”

Furthermore,
the work done by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does
not meet the basic standards set by reputable scientific journals because its
“conclusions go [contrary] to observed facts; the figures used are deliberately
chosen to support its conclusions (with no regard for the most basic scientific
honesty); and the variability of natural phenomena is passed over without
comment.”

As we know, true believers neglect to measure what happens
to real human beings when the climate change mania is allowed to define
government policy. The French mathematicians are especially concerned with the
effect on France:

“French
policy [on] CO2 is particularly stupid, since we are one of the countries with
the cleanest industrial sector,” the white paper pointed out, slamming
“virtuous” policies that have resulted in a significant loss of industrial
activity and the resultant loss of jobs that has left three million French
unemployed even as global CO2 emissions continue to rise.

“If we
were in France to stop all industrial activity (let’s not talk about our
intellectual activity, [which] ceased long ago), if we were to eradicate all
traces of animal life, the composition of the atmosphere would not alter in any
measurable, noticeable way,” they said.

These policies should never be judged by the outcomes they
produce. They succeed when they allow their adherents to feel virtuous.

One empathizes with those who are in the throes of an apocalyptic
visions, those who are standing on the street corner with signs reading “The
End Is Near.” One also understands that when you base policy on apocalyptic
visions you will never allow the data to shake your conviction.

True believers believe that the threat is so grave and that
they are so right about it that no dissent should be allowed. Remember when
leftist politicians and intellectuals said that dissent was the highest form of
patriotism? No longer.

CNS News continues to quote the French mathematicians:

“People
who do not believe in global warming have been told to shut up. No public
debate, no contradictory discourse. No articles in scientific journals. They
simply have been told that the case is proven and it is time to take action… We
are simply required to keep quiet and do what we are told. No second opinion is
permitted.”

At considerable risk to life and limb I would suggest that
you might for a mere moment look at the way climate change is being used
politically. Consider the possibility that it is being presented as an irrefutable fact, used to
persuade people to vote one way or the other.

And you might also consider the fact that the world’s
greatest polluters, China and India will never sign on to a treaty limiting
their ability to feed their people. Keep in mind, nations and cultures are
engaged economic, social, political and even military competition. When China
and India are building power plants as fast as they can, America is shutting
its own down.

You might say that we are occupying the moral high ground
and that our people will breathe cleaner air a few centuries from now. But you
might also say that our civilization is committing cultural
suicide.

When it comes to how their policies might harm human beings,
the climate change zealots don't really care. They believe that human beings are at fault and deserve
to be punished. The natural world is being destroyed by their sinful
consumerist ways, their love of nourishment and luxury. They deserve to be punished,
to be reduced to subsistence living. If a few or a few million of them starve
to death it’s that much less carbon dioxide emissions.

In truth, following a dictum of Ludwig Wittgenstein there is
no such thing as a scientific fact about tomorrow. There are hypotheses and
prophecies, but there are no facts about what is going to happen tomorrow or
next year or a century from now.

In a strange way the climate change hysteria is like what
others have called the madness of crowds. It is like selling your house
and your business in order to buy a tulip bulb. How did that one work out?

[Addendum: From the comments, David Foster provides us with this link to the remarks of physicist Freeman Dyson on this topic. Link here.]

Friday, October 30, 2015

According to the New York Times, in particular to its television critic James Poniewozik, the winners in Wednesday night’s CNBC
candidate debate were the GOP candidates and Fox News.

One recalls that Frank
Bruni praised the Fox moderators for doing an excellent job at the first
Republican presidential debate. To me this seemed like a fair assessment. Some
questioned whether Times writers would be as fair about their natural allies,
especially when their natural allies messed up. Keep in mind, the lead
questioner on Wednesday was Times contributor John Harwood.

Poniewozik opens by
comparing CNBC unfavorably with Fox News. That in itself is worth noting:

Back in
August, in the first Republican debate of the cycle, Fox News’s moderators
asked tough questions — much too tough, notably, for Donald J. Trump’s liking —
and held firm on the debate rules. CNBC seemed to be trying this approach, but
without the quickness and discipline to pull it off.

The moderators seemed to want to provoke a food fight among
the candidates. Instead, they set themselves up and lost. They should have
known that some of the candidates were former federal prosecutors. Ted Cruz was a champion debater and a prosecutor. Chris Christie was a federal prosecutor. You know that such people are very good in arguing on their feet. They were far brighter than their journalist adversaries. Yet, liberal journalists believe that they belong to an intellectual elite and believe that all Republicans are, by definition, dumb. For them the experience, coupled with the bad reviews, must have been very galling
indeed.

Poniewozik continues:

The
debate quickly became candidates vs. CNBC. The network lost in a rout.

The
moderators often seemed simultaneously aggressive and underprepared: a fatal
combination. Becky Quick asked Mr. Trump about having once called Marco Rubio
“Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator” — referring to the founder of Facebook.
But when Mr. Trump denied it, Ms. Quick failed to recall that the quotation came from his
own website. Instead, she said “My apologies,” despite having gotten the
words right.

Ms.
Quick mentioned the source later, but the moment had passed and the impression
that Mr. Trump had won the exchange had been made. When you leave your homework
in your locker like that, the audience will not be offering makeup credit later.

As for John Harwood’s professionalism, Poniewozik derides
it:

And
co-moderator John Harwood (who also contributes to The New York Times) often
delivered his questions as if he were a candidate whose handlers had prepped
him with zingers. (To Mr. Trump: “Is this a comic-book version of a
presidential campaign?”)

You might believe that the Times was upset because the CNBC
debate made the Republicans look better than liberal journalists. But then
again, it has been known to defend the impossible before, so we are inclined to
give it, through its television critic, praise for a fair and balanced
appraisal.

The Times was hardly alone in comparing CNBC unfavorably
with Fox News. Lloyd Grove reports the views of former CNN Washington Bureau
Chief Frank Sesno:

“I
think the first Fox debate was excellent,” former CNN Washington bureau chief
Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University’s School of Media and
Public Affairs, told The Daily Beast. “But when Fox did the first debate, it
was a getting-to-know-you debate” for which every question—even the ones from
Megyn Kelly about which Donald Trump bitterly complained—was a fresh subject to
the candidates and the audience.

By
contrast, Sesno said, the CNBC debate was touted in advance as focusing on the
candidates’ competing ideas for strengthening the economy, creating jobs,
fixing federal entitlement programs, and other pocketbook issues.

Instead,
Sesno argued, the debate tended to focus on the moderators’ provocative,
personal, and, by some lights, insulting questions—and the candidates’
reprisals.

“I
think it was a great wasted opportunity,” Sesno said. “CNBC had an opportunity
to own a space that was unique, and they advertised it as such. They’re the
economy and markets channel, and they had an opportunity really to drive a
focus around a genuine debate over economic policy … And it didn’t happen.”

Sesno
continued: “The questions were utterly predictable. There were very few
follow-ups. There was little effort to generate an actual debate… Instead,
there was this rehash of totally legitimate questions about rack record, the
viability of candidacy—but all questions that have been asked before. The
opening question—‘What are your personal weaknesses?’—was a very clever
effort…but it had a thoroughly predictable result, and some candidates ignored
it completely. In a sense, it was wasted time…and a grownup debate about the
economic direction of our country didn’t happen.”

And Frank Rich offered a similar assessment in New York
Magazine. He called it a “disorganized amateur night.” He implies, to his
chagrin, that the CNBC moderators seemed to be setting up Fox
Business to host an enlightening debate a week from Tuesday:

The
lustiest cheers of the evening, some of them generated by Cruz, were for the
candidates’ attacks on “the media” in general and the debate moderators in
particular. CNBC surely did everything it could to prove the candidates’ case.
Without explanation, the debate was preceded by nearly 15 minutes of banter by
ill-informed and bombastic commentators, including the Trump ally (and aspiring
Senatorial candidate) Larry Kudlow. Among the questioners at the debate
itself were Jim Cramer, a poster
boy for the reckless excess and conflicts of interest that found their
apotheosis in the Wall Street crash of 2008, and Rick Santelli, whose 2009
on-air rant about American “losers” inspired the tea-party movement.
The whole event felt like a disorganized amateur night, and one can only
imagine Roger Ailes howling with delight at every wrong turn.

Every once in a while men are told that they should act more
like gentlemen. Point well taken. And yet, it is very difficult to act like a
gentleman if women refuse to act like ladies.

Being a lady has clearly gone out of fashion. Today’s woman
would be roundly mocked if she ever said she wished to be a lady. She is more
likely to want to be a good feminist and to emulate the example of Lena Dunham.
Or to be a boorish and vulgar celebrity. It is almost too obvious to say, but the
Kardashian girls do not even pretend to be ladies. Nor does famed train wreck
Amy Schumer.

How you treat a man or a woman depends on how said man or
woman defines him or herself. If a man acts and dresses like a gentleman he
will be treated one way. If he acts and dresses like an aspiring rapper or an overgrown
teenager he will be treated differently. If a woman acts like a lady she will
be treated one way. If she acts like a vamp, like a celebrity or like an ersatz
man she will be treated differently.

In our current age these issues are confused. We no longer
respect traditional codes of behavior. We like to think that we have overcome
them. We have gotten to the point where people seem constantly to be defining new
rules of conduct and punishing people for not respecting rules they have not even
heard of.

We have dispensed with the traditional rituals of courtship and
wondered why young men and young women are having so much trouble forming
durable relationships.

Apparently, our neighbors from across the pond, the British
have not totally given up on the idea of being a lady. Be thankful for small
things.

Libby Purves has written the 39 rules for being a lady. They
have been published in the Daily Mail. Purves is responding to a magazine
called Country Life that recently published rules for being a gentleman. One
notes that these rules have changed somewhat from what would have pertained a
century ago. Two cheers for progress. And yet, they do maintain a link to the
past, to the tried and true standards for public decorum and for public
self-presentation.

As the old rule goes, if you want people to respect you
start by acting like you respect yourself.

Without further ado, here is the list.

A lady:

1. Can carry her own luggage, but accepts offers with a smile.

2. Says ‘thank you’ when a seat is offered or a door opened.

3. Doesn’t take offence easily.

4. Fends off unwanted passes with ease.

5. Accepts a compliment, even from an inappropriate, old fool.

6. Makes her point firmly, but unaggressively.

7. Knows that a single, explosive swear word beats a torrent of obscenity.

8. Walks like a functional human, without tittupping, hip-swinging or hair-flicking.

9. Can perfectly well change a wheel, but will express gratitude if a man offers.

10. Tactfully covers up others’ social gaffes.

11. Accepts that not everyone wants her cat jumping on them.

12. Laughs at the ridiculous hero of Fifty Shades Of Grey.

13. Drapes an elegant shawl when breast-feeding in public.

14. Like Grace Kelly, thinks clothes should be ‘tight enough to show you’re a woman but loose enough to show you’re a lady’.

15. Dresses to fit in unobtrusively with other people’s events. Especially funerals.

16. Can hold her drink without falling over.

17. Shares a cafe table or train seat with a smile.

18. Doesn’t boast about exotic holidays on social media.

19. Tries not to talk about house prices.

20. Doesn’t attempt to apply full make-up on a packed train.

21. Knows calorie and GI counts, but never speaks of them.

22. Doesn’t shout down her phone in the street or on the train.

23. Knows when to stop talking.

24. Accepts some chaps are embarrassed by remarks about vaginas, etc.

25. Can pay the tab in a restaurant without making it obvious.

26. Gives a 1,000-watt smile to nervous teenage boys, making them feel like kings.

27. Has enough natural authority to make teenagers take their feet off train seats.

28. Does not comment on other women’s weight.

29. On an awful internet date, kindly sticks it out until 10pm . . .

30. . . . but knows how to make it clear, gracefully, that it’s not a goer.

31. Teaches her children manners.

32. Always tells adult godchildren that they are ‘doing absolutely wonderfully’, even when said godchildren are clearly total trainwrecks.

33. Calls policemen ‘Officer’. Even PCSOs.

34. Removes her screaming toddler from a busy cafe with an apologetic smile.

35. Won’t kiss and tell, or compare men’s prowess.

36. Has a flair for wearing hats, but keeps her belly button to herself in public.

37. Deals gracefully with spiders, mice, etc, without screaming.

38. Takes off her stilettos on other people’s parquet floors.

39. Is kind to nervous, inadequate chaps who read lists about how to be a gentleman.

21. Knows calorie and GI counts, but never speaks of them.

22. Doesn’t shout down her phone in the street or on the train.

23. Knows when to stop talking.

24. Accepts some chaps are embarrassed by remarks about vaginas, etc.

25. Can pay the tab in a restaurant without making it obvious.

26. Gives a 1,000-watt smile to nervous teenage boys, making them feel like kings.

27. Has enough natural authority to make teenagers take their feet off train seats.

28. Does not comment on other women’s weight.

29. On an awful internet date, kindly sticks it out until 10pm . . .

30. . . . but knows how to make it clear, gracefully, that it’s not a goer.

31. Teaches her children manners.

32. Always tells adult godchildren that they are ‘doing absolutely wonderfully’, even when said godchildren are clearly total trainwrecks.

33. Calls policemen ‘Officer’. Even PCSOs.

34. Removes her screaming toddler from a busy cafe with an apologetic smile.

35. Won’t kiss and tell, or compare men’s prowess.

36. Has a flair for wearing hats, but keeps her belly button to herself in public.

37. Deals gracefully with spiders, mice, etc, without screaming.

38. Takes off her stilettos on other people’s parquet floors.

39. Is kind to nervous, inadequate chaps who read lists about how to be a gentleman.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

The news from the education front is not good. We should not
jump to stark conclusions from one year’s test results, but American
schoolchildren in the fourth and eighth grades are not doing well. Their proficiency
in reading and math has, on a year-over-year basis, declined.

At a time when mathematics is becoming increasingly
important for future careers, American children are falling further behind. The
question is not whether they can compete with the children in Singapore
or Helsinki. They are doing worse than their own cohorts did two years ago… and worse than every other time since the tests were first given in 1990.

Surely, this is why President Obama offered up his own
solution to the problem: don’t test the children so much. After all, if they
don’t take tests they cannot fail at the tests. It's like saying that we can reduce the crime rate by not arresting so many people.

One must also note that many
parents have opted out of the tests… because they do not agree with what
Washington is trying to impose on them under the name of Common Core.

Brilliant… this is what seven years of Obama education policy
has gotten us.

The dip
in scores comes as the country’s employers demand workers with ever-stronger
skills in mathematics to compete in a global economy. It also comes as states
grapple with the new Common Core academic standards and a rebellion against
them.

As for language skills, the
results are also discouraging:

Progress
in reading, which has been generally more muted than in math for decades, also
stalled this year as scores among fourth graders flat-lined and eighth-grade
scores decreased. The exams assess a representative sampling of students on
math and reading skills in public and private schools.

But, what does it all mean? Several interpretations offer
themselves:

Education
officials said that the first-time decline in math scores was unexpected, but
that it could be related to changes ushered in by the Common Core standards,
which have been adopted by more than 40 states. For example, some of the
fourth-grade math questions on data analysis, statistics and geometry are not
part of that grade’s guidelines under the Common Core and so might not have
been covered in class. The largest score drops on the fourth-grade math exams
were on questions related to those topics.

The
stagnating performance could also reflect the demographic changes sweeping
America’s schools and the persistent achievement gap between white students and
minorities, as well as between students from poor families and their more
affluent peers.

One hypothesis is that it is the fault of Common Core. The
Times considers this possibility:

As
states have adopted the Common Core — guidelines for what students should know
and be able to do between kindergarten and high school — many teachers have
adjusted their curriculum and instructional methods, particularly in math.
Students are asked to use math to solve real-life problems and find different
ways to come at the same answer rather than simply repeating formulas.

Some
educators suggested that some of the changes have sowed confusion among
teachers and students that could be reflected in the national test scores.
“Right now, what’s going on in many states is a wholesale change in math
instruction,” said Daniel Koretz, a professor of education at Harvard. “We
don’t know what’s happening with that in classrooms.”

One has had occasion to comment on this before, but the
point should be made again: children learn math better by memorizing and
applying formulas by rote. By forcing them to think about all the different
ways they can find the same answer and by casting the multiplication tables in
terms of solving real life problems, teachers are slowing down the learning
process.

The Times also notes that some of the topics on the eighth
grade math test were not covered in the new Common Core curriculum. This
suggests, if I read it correctly, that Common Core is less challenging that
previous teaching methods.

And then there are demographics. America’s schools have very
recently seen an influx of poor, uneducated children from Mexico and Central
America. Surely, these children are dragging down the scores, but their
presence might also be slowing down the pace of classroom instruction.

The Times does offer the following on demographics:

About a
quarter of public school students are Hispanic, compared with fewer than 10
percent in 1990. As a group, the scores of Hispanic students trail those of
white students; this year, for example, 21 percent of Hispanic fourth graders
scored at a level deemed proficient or above on reading tests, compared with 46
percent of white students.

The
proportion of African-American students in public schools has remained fairly
stable, but an achievement gap with white students remains. On the fourth-grade
reading tests this year, just 18 percent of black students were deemed
proficient.

America’s
schoolchildren are also increasingly poor. Students from poor families often arrive
at school with smaller vocabularies than students from middle-class or more
affluent households, and are faced with challenges like hunger, homelessness
and parents working several jobs, all of which can interfere with their
learning in school and the academic support they receive at home — and
ultimately their test scores.

Of course, the problem is not the difference between the percentage
of Hispanic children in 1990 vs. the percentage today. The scores increased every year from 1990 until 2013. Thus, we should be looking for a
more proximate cause.

In fact, the scores are compared to those from 2013. The
Times has the statistics:

The
average fourth-grade math score this year was 240 on a scale of 500, down from
242 in 2013, the last time the federal assessment results were released. The
average eighth-grade math score was 282, down from 285 two years ago.

In
reading, the average fourth-grade score of 223, compared with 222 in 2013, was
not a statistically significant difference. The average eighth-grade score fell
to 265 from 268.

Also, it is frightening to see that when it comes to reading
proficiency among fourth graders, white children score 46%, Hispanic children
score 21% and black children score 18%. The scores are appalling.

One is confident that poverty plays an important role in
some cases, and one suspects that there is more poverty among black and
Hispanic students than there is among white students. And, what happened to the
Asian students? You know, the ones who are being brought up by the dread Tiger
Moms. What are their proficiency rates?

If the poverty rate in minority communities has recently
increased and if the schools have been forced to use Common Core teaching methods, one
is obliged to say that much of the fault must lie with the presidency of Barack
Obama.

To keep it all in balance, we also must note that many of
these schools have adopted Michelle Obama’s signature healthy foods program.
Since many children are refusing to eat these so-called healthy meals, one
might also conclude that they are doing badly on their tests because they are
malnourished.

Note well the title of Thomas Friedman’s latest column: “Telling
Middle East Negotiators: ‘Have a nice life.’”

In his opening paragraph Friedman describes a scene that
took place on the eve of the 1991 Madrid peace conference that Pres. George H.
W. Bush convened after winning the first Gulf
War.

In Friedman’s words:

In the Times
review of the American Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross’s important new
history of Israeli-U.S. relations, “Doomed to Succeed,” a telling moment on the
eve of the 1991 Madrid peace conference caught my attention. The Palestinian
delegation had raised some last-minute reservations with the secretary of
state, James A. Baker III. Baker was livid, and told the Palestinians before
walking out on them: “With you people, the souk never closes, but it is closed
with me. Have a nice life.”

Did you note the way the
Times introduced its own special anti-Israeli bias in the headline? Though
the headline says that James Baker was walking out on “Middle East negotiators,”
in truth he was excoriating the Palestinian delegation for failing to act in
good faith. He was dismissing them because, in his view, they were trying to
walk back from an agreement they had negotiated.

These are not the kinds of
people you can do business with. If they do not know how to be good to their
word, there is no real point in negotiating with them. It's the first lesson you learn in your negotiation course.

By making it appear that
Baker had dismissed both Palestinians and Israelis, Friedman or the Times
headline writer was suggesting--in fact, Friedman argues it in the rest of his
column-- that both sides are equally culpable, that today they must both make
concessions in order to forge a durable peace agreement. And yet, if only one
side is capable of keeping its word, what is the point of the concessions…
except to advance the final Palestinian goal—the destruction of Israel.

And, think about this
angle. When our current Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated his recent sell out
to the Iranians, giving them everything they wanted and more, can you imagine him
telling the Iranians to have a nice life.

It seems clear that Kerry
was charged with getting a deal at any price. Surely, he was the right man for
that job. the Iranians knew it and they played him skillfully.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

That’s what it looks like to many Americans. It makes for great entertainment, but it doesn't bode well electorally.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the candidates who
are leading the field for the Republican presidential nomination are the least
qualified. The candidates who are lagging and those who have dropped out are
the most qualified.

If that sounds like rational thinking to you, you don’t know
much about rational thinking.

Of course, we know what it all means. We have heard it from a
television personality who goes by the name of Kennedy.

According to Kennedy, the Republican Party is angry and
frustrated because the current president is acting more like a dictator than a
leader. People vote for Republicans. They elect Republicans to just about every public office. The result: Barack Hussein
acts as though nothing has happened.

Regardless of what the people think, regardless of what the
Congress thinks, Barack Obama does what he pleases. Think about Obama’s
immigration policy, which he justified doing by executive fiat because Congress
did not act. What did Congress do to stop it? What could they have done to stop
it? People do have a right to be furious, but why not be slightly more furious
at Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic Party. And why not do what is
necessary to ensure that the next president is a Republican, and not just in
name only?

Or, take the Iran nuclear deal. A large majority of
Americans and a large majority of members of Congress do not approve of it. It
does not matter. The deal is now in force.

Americans feel like they are being bullied. It is not a good
feeling. So, they want to bring in a bigger bully, someone who will take the
gloves off, a street fighter, someone with brass knuckles who will bully the
bully. It makes a certain amount of sense. Or at least it would if there were
any chance that Donald Trump would ever be elected.

But, a large majority of Republicans believe that Trump is
their most electable candidate. They are saying this just as Trump begins to
fade, as the aura seems to be dissipating into thin air.

Trump’s problem is that he is one-note. He lacks the
relevant experience and does not know anything about the vast majority of the
issues that would confront a president. Empty as he is, he wears out his
welcome. Being all show and no substance, Trump is currently fading in the
polls because people are getting bored with the shtick.

To look at the bright side,, Trump seems to have saved us
from Jeb Bush and that might be a sufficient accomplishment. His charge that
Bush is low energy resonated because Jeb always seems somewhat weak at the
knees.

And yet, Trump could think of nothing very original to throw
at Ben Carson than to accuse him of being low energy. Thereby, he opened
himself up to the obvious retort, offered last night by Bill O’Reilly. The host
of the O’Reilly Factor was laughing at the bloviating billionaire. He noted that
someone who was capable of standing on his feet for fifteen hours performing
brain surgery—a field where you cannot make mistakes, because if you cut the
wrong brain cell it will not heal or grow back—is not low energy. Carson’s
poise and self-control are positive character traits, especially when compared
to a candidate who pretends to be out of control.

When it comes to Trump, there’s no there there, there’s no
command of the facts or the issues. It is inevitable that Republicans, no
matter how angry they are, or better, no matter how willing they are to be led
around by their anger, will tire of the exercise.

To be scrupulously fair to the Donald, people have flocked
to his candidacy because he represents the opposite of today’s beaten-down
whimpering metrosexual hypersensitive American male. For his supporters Trump has
been the antidote to the wussified American man.

The point is well taken. Yet, the antidote to today’s
diminished American man is a man who can do the job, who can function
effectively as the president, not someone who is dancing on a very thin resume.
Some people thought that Dwight Eisenhower had low energy, too. But, he was an
effective leader. One needs to understand the difference between posturing and
achievement.

Many Republicans blame their Congressional leaders for
having effectively bent over and submitted to Obama. Surely Republicans could
make more of a show of having a spine. They should relish confrontation. And
yet, doing so would mean attacking a man the American people put in the White House. You reap what you
sow.

Apparently, the average Republican voter reasons like this: Republicans
in Washington have been looking ineffectual, so why not nominate a candidate
who will really be ineffectual, like Dr. Ben Carson. One admires Carson as much
as anyone, but it is unthinkable that a plurality of Republican voters actually
believe that he is qualified for the presidency, or that, when push comes to
vote, he would win an election against Hillary Clinton.

In a normal year, in a year when people were thinking with
their minds and not with their rage, they would find much to like in a
candidate like John Kasich. Of course, they would have found much to like in
Scott Walker and Rick Perry, too. A lot of good that did.

In any
other year, Kasich might be an ideal GOP candidate. He's the two-term governor
of Ohio, a pivotal swing state that Republicans have never won the White House
without. Kasich was reelected in a landslide last year and his
approval ratings in Ohio remain very high.

Kasich has served in Congress. He knows the federal budget
and has balanced it. He has worked on foreign policy. He has governed
effectively. What’s not to like?

Apparently, he’s too low energy for all of the tough, manly GOP
voters, people like Trump supporter Mike Tyson. So, yesterday Kasich said that the current Republican presidential
primary campaign is downright “crazy.”

It makes a certain amount of sense. Beyond Trump and Carson,
Republican voters are gaga over inexperienced first-term senators, because electing
a first-term senator has worked out so well in the past. And, let’s not forget
Carly Fiorina, an excellent debater who seems to believe that for having
failed to run a major corporation she is qualified to run the country.

Anyway, Kasich is angry because Trump is taking credit for
the Ford Motor Company’s decision-- taken last spring, by the way-- to continue
manufacturing some of its trucks in Ohio. One must note that the negotiations
that led to this decision began in 2011.

Three days ago Trump tweeted:

Word is
that Ford Motor, because of my constant badgering at packed events, is going to
cancel their deal to go to Mexico and stay in U.S.

Three minutes later Trump doubled down on the bogus claim:

Do you
think I will get credit for keeping Ford in U.S. Who cares, my supporters know
the truth. Think what can be done as president!

Now we know what Trump can do as president. Talk the talk
but not walk the walk. Make false claims and yell at anyone who does not
believe them.

What’s the real story? NPR reports it:

The
real story appears to be this. Ford has decided to move some pickup truck
production from Mexico to Ohio, but that deal was announced back in the Spring.
And Ohio's governor is proud of it.

"I
went to Detroit and had a lot of meetings with the auto companies," Kasich
said, referring to the time shortly after he took office in 2011 when Ford
received state tax incentives. That benefit has been traced to the decision to
move the truck manufacturing back to Ohio. Ford executives have criticized
Trump and praised Kasich in response to the flare up.

Without
naming Trump, Kasich said, "Anybody else that's in here trying to say that
something they did today affected something in 2011 must be living in a time
machine or something."

On the one side you have a governor who accomplished
something substantive, who kept manufacturing jobs in his state. On the other
side you have a candidate who takes credit for something that he did not
accomplish, thus, who burnishes his resume with a lie.

So, naturally the Republican Party is infatuated with the latter
while ignoring the former. Let’s be clear here. When you are running against
someone who lies all the time, someone whose initials are HRC, you cannot
attack her when your leading candidate tells lies himself.

Kasich continued, saying that the Republican campaign had
become “crazy, as in, nuts. NPR reports:

"Look,
we're hearing all kinds of crazy things right now on the campaign trail,"
Kasich added. "One of the guys wants to abolish Medicare and Medicaid.
Another guy wants to deport 10 million people out of America."

There,
Kasich was referring to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who recently talked
about replacing Medicare and medicaid with private health savings accounts, but
later insisted he wasn't proposing the elimination of the programs. Kasich also
sounded like he was calling out Trump, who has repeatedly talked about
deporting millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally.

And keep in mind, Marco Rubio, splendid human being, does
not believe in the life of the mother exception for abortion. How do you think that is going
to go down once the country finds out about it?

True enough, Kasich is not the only candidate who could win
the election and get the job done. The trouble is, neither Trump nor Carson nor
Fiorina is in that group.

Those of you who have been following the debate about the
way autism is being treated in France will have noticed that the current French
notion that autism is caused by “refrigerator” mothers dates to Bruno
Bettleheim.

Bettleheim became an authority on autism in the 1960s
through a clinic he ran in Chicago and through a book called The Empty Fortress. In later years
Bettleheim was exposed as a fraud with merely a Ph. D. in art history. He committed
suicide in 1990.

Naturally, French psychoanalysts who are mired in the fever
swamps of the psychoanalytic past are drawn to his theories. Once a
reactionary, always a reactionaray.

Now, a young filmmaker named Leo Fleming has crafted a film
about a man who was, as a boy, treated by Bettleheim and his proxies. The film shows
Fleming’s uncle Thomas today and is intercut with pictures from his childhood. Throughout
the movie we hear the ghostly voice of Bettleheim himself fabulating a theory
of autism.

Fleming introduces his movie, entitled, A Self Chosen State on Vimeo:

Bruno
Bettelheim states in his 1967 book 'The Empty Fortress' that "...the
precipitating factor in infantile autism is the parent's wish that his child
should not exist." Bettelheim subscribed to the 'Refrigerator Mother'
theory; a theory that proposed autism as a 'self-chosen state' prompted by a
'cold' mother, in which children are compelled to shut themselves off from an
uncaring, unloving world.

Martha
and Jim Fleming were among countless others who were told that their child's
autism was due to their unloving nature. They were also among the many whose
children were taken away under the care of Bruno Bettelheim to his facilities
in Chicago, to be 'cured' of this malady. A Self Chosen State is a short film
detailing a personal history of a widespread injustice, of the trauma it
inflicted and of the selfless love it inspired into action.

My thanks to commenter KCFleming for bringing this to our
attention. He informs us that the movie was chosen for the “AS Film Festival where
it will play next month in the Maxxi National Museum of Art in Rome, Italy.”

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

For those who are searching for a new job or who might be doing so in the foreseeable future, the linked essay tells you most of what you need to know. It tells you what to do, what not to do and how to go about finding a great job.It find it to be exceptionally good and so I offer the link without commentary. As a public service. [Addendum: in a new post the author has presented two sample resumes, so you have a reference point in drawing up your own. Link here.]

The
work of the text is to literalize the signifiers of the first encounter,
dismantling the ideal as an idol. In this literalization, the idolatrous
deception of the first moment becomes readable. The ideal will reveal itself to
be an idol. Step by step, the ideal is pursued by a devouring doppelganger,
tearing apart all transcendence. This de-idealization follows the path of
reification, or, to invoke Augustine, the path of carnalization of the
spiritual. Rhetorically, this is effected through literalization. A Sentimental Education does
little more than elaborate the progressive literalization of the Annunciation.

It comes to us from a German professor named Barbara Vinken.
Said professor has also professed at places like Yale University, New York
University, the University of Chicago. The text is quoted from a book that was
published by Stanford University Press.

If this represents the best and the brightest that the
academic world is offering these days you understand why students at
these institutions have, as Camille Paglia has said, minds like jello.

The text is a pathetic hodge podge of big words that do not
end up meaning anything. The author
seems clearly to be suffering from polysyllabic-itis. I take it as an indication
that she knows she is an impostor and is terrified that she will be found out.

Naturally, some people have been pondering the fact that
this counts for serious scholarship at top universities. They have suggested,
for example, that academics belong to a very high status club and write to keep
out the hoi polloi.

It might also be that these people are ignorant fools, impostors
who know nothing and can teach nothing. They might be flinging a mountain of
gibberish to ensure that no one could ever judge them. One would be hard put to say that this is just
bad writing. It is not writing at all.

The real meaning is clear: Humanities teaching in today’s
universities is hopelessly corrupt.

Anyway, the bad writers of academia do have their defenders.
Among them Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who, one hastens to add, was not
talking about the Vinken text quoted above. Pinker suggests that academic writers
get so deeply into their fields that they get lost. They are so highly
specialized that they cannot communicate with normal people or even with students.

Pinker,
a cognitive scientist, says it boils down to “brain training”: the years of
deep study required of academics to become specialists in their chosen fields
actually work against them being able to unpack their complicated ideas in a
coherent, concrete manner suitable for average folks. Translation: Experts find
it really hard to be simple and straightforward when writing about their
expertise. He calls this the “curse of knowledge” and says academics aren’t
aware they’re doing it or properly trained to identify their blindspots—when
they know too much and struggle to ascertain what others don’t know. In other
words, sometimes it’s simply more intellectually challenging to write clearly.
“It’s easy to be complex, it’s harder to be simple,” Bosley said. “It would
make academics better researchers and better writers, though, if they had to
translate their thinking into plain language.” It would probably also mean more
people, including colleagues, would read their work.

The curse of knowledge… what a clever phrase. Pinker must
feel a special need to cover the shame of some of his colleagues. But, the
problem, of course, is not that these writers know so much. They do not know
much of anything at all. The academic world has been corrupted by political
correctness and identity politics. In the Humanities, especially, it is
infested with people who are completely unqualified for their positions. People who did not earn
their way to their jobs often suffer from impostor syndrome.

A moment’s reflection answers the question of whether
academics have always written so badly because they knew too much. In fact, the
claim is nonsense. One might go back a century and examine a book like Oxford
professor A. C. Bradley’s Shakespearean
Tragedy or Harvard philosophy professor Josiah Royce’s Lectures on Modern Idealism. And William James taught psychology at Harvard.

More recently, in the field of literature, Lionel Trilling
wrote well and clearly. As did Cleanth Brooks and William Wimsatt and Northrop
Frye and Harold Bloom. I would add two distinguished academics I took graduate courses
from: Erich Heller and Nathan Scott. Former academic Henry Kissinger writes
well even today, and he is writing in his second language. So does Niall
Ferguson.

Back in the day academics took pride in the quality of their
writing. They considered it their job to write well and clearly. After all, how
can you teach anyone anything if they do not understand what you are saying?
Today, however, students do not study with people who can write intelligible
prose and who know what they are talking about. They have the privilege of
having their minds deformed by the likes of Vinken, Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek
and Alain Badiou.

It’s going to take more than a call for better writing to
make the dimwits who currently occupy high positions in academic Humanities
departments into writers of readable prose.

Not too long ago I saw a psychiatrist on television
explaining that young people should pursue their dreams and passions, even if
and especially if they want to be artists. Since I have been arguing against
such a folly for years now, I quickly took notice.

If they do not, the psychiatrist opined, the world might be
missing out on another Van Gogh and we might miss out on a new Starry Night.

Said psychiatrist failed to remark that Van Gogh cut off his
own ear, point that he ought to have seen as perhaps a reason not to make the
man anyone’s role model. We do not expect that psychiatrists know anything
about artistic creation. And it’s good that they do not. But they ought, as
mental health professionals, know a lot about people who cut off their ears… or
other offending organs.

You might think that it is far more wonderful to be Van Gogh
than to sell insurance, but you should also ask yourself whether you can better
survive the next few years without Starry Night or without insurance.

For my part I think that it is generally very bad advice to
tell young people to pursue their dreams of becoming artists. I can assert with great
confidence that the chances your child will grow up to become Van Gogh are nil. Setting up impossible goals consigns children to failure. One might say, and
one has said, that people can learn from failure, but some people also become
embittered by it.

If a young person believes that since he wants so badly to
be an artist the world owes him the proper recognition, he might very well
persist in his folly, becoming increasingly resentful and increasingly
withdrawn from a world that refuses to recognize his passion.

When professors, and other people who should know better,
encourage talentless students to pursue careers in the arts they are doing them
a disservice. Millions of young people are living in squalor, pursuing an
illusion… because their teachers and television psychiatrists told them to go
for it.

No one has expressed this better than the satirical
publication The Onion:

CHARLOTTESVILLE,
VA—In an effort to help his students develop inaccurate perceptions of their
talents, University of Virginia creative writing professor Alan Erickson told
reporters Monday that he takes the time to provide each and every one of them
with personalized false hope. “Every student is different, and even though
there may be 30 of them per class, I feel it’s important that I make enough
time to sit down with them individually to let them know they have a unique
voice worth pursuing,” said Erickson, explaining that he frequently extends his
office hours and often stays after class to meet with students one-on-one to
ensure they hear individualized, unfounded optimism about their writing and
their prospects within the publishing industry. “It certainly adds a bit to my
workload, but providing specific feedback and encouragement really has a huge
impact on their confidence. Going that extra mile for your students is what
inspires them to follow their dreams.” The professor added that his efforts have
yielded some notable results, asserting that a number of his most deluded
former students have gone on to humiliating, short-lived attempts at writing
careers.

I have written about the problem extensively, both on this
blog and in my book The Last
Psychoanalyst. The medical health establishment in France, controlled in
large part by psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic thinking has been derelict in its
treatment of autistic children.

Filmmaker Sophie Robert brought the problem to public
attention in her 2011 documentary film: The Wall. Three of the psychoanalysts
represented therein sued Robert for defamation. They won the first trial in a
district court and eventually lost on appeal.

For those who do not know French we now have the full story in
English along with an English translation of the text of The Wall.

For those who want to know how French psychoanalysts—both Lacanian
and not—see autism and to study the full story of this film and what happened
to a filmmaker who ran afoul of psychoanalysts who belong to the major
Lacanian organization in France, the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne (trans. The
Wholly Freudian Church) the history and the transcript should be illuminating.